The court-appointed monitor of defunct Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX has reported that six cold wallets supposedly holding $100 million of customer cryptocurrencies for 115,000 accounts at the exchange held only $400,000 in digital assets. At the time of the sudden death of QuadrigaCX's founder, the exchange was supposedly holding over almost $200 million in customer funds and cryptocurrencies. There are various theories as to what happened to the customers' coins. Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken recently offered a $100,000 reward for assisting in the recovery.
The Department of Justice in its February 2019 Journal of Federal Law and Practice focused on cybercrime and cyber threats. Of note was an article on "Attribution in Cryptocurrency Cases" and how best to prove criminal charges, despite the fact that these transactions are generally considered anonymous. Among its many findings, the report noted the challenges in proving attribution because of the way cryptocurrencies function, and stated it was key for prosecutors to understand blockchain and explain it clearly to juries. A Big Four accounting firm recently issued a report linking Iranian nationals behind the bitcoin ransomware scheme SamSam to the crypto exchange WEX. SamSam is ransomware demanding bitcoin that reportedly damaged multiple U.S. companies, government agencies, universities and hospitals. According to the report, within 34 months the hackers managed to extort over $6 million in bitcoin and caused over $30 million in losses. By analyzing the wallet addresses and emails used by the perpetrators, the accounting firm was able to link the Iranians to the WEX exchange and the SamSam scheme. In addition, another recent report from a cybersecurity firm provided details on yet another cryptocurrency mining malware scheme, detected in a program commonly used to run operating systems.
For more information, please check out the following links:
- $100 Million Short: QuadrigaCX Audit Can't Account for 26K Missing Bitcoin
- Quadriga Crypto Mystery Deepens With 'Cold Wallets' Found Empty
- Kraken: We're offering a $100,000 reward for discovery of Quadriga coins
- DoJ Cybercrime and Cyberthreats Report: Attribution in Cryptocurrency Cases
- PwC: Bitcoin Ransomware Hackers Laundered Money via WEX Exchange
- Hundreds of Vulnerable Docker Hosts Exploited by Cryptocurrency Miners
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